87: Through Her Eyes: A Legacy of Healing and Social Innovation

Our latest episode of LiveWell features a powerful conversation with Dr. Eraka Bath, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA and a triple board-certified expert in child, adolescent, adult, and forensic psychiatry. Dr. Bath’s work profoundly impacts youth in the foster care and juvenile legal system, addressing critical issues of racial justice, structural vulnerability, and the path to system transformation.

We discuss:

• Her early exposure to social conditions and structural marginalization through her travels with her mother as a child
• Why she was drawn to psychiatry and how this field can be used to address root causes of socioeconomic injustices
• Identifying problems in clinical spaces and finding solutions that extend beyond the doctor-patient relationship to impact structures and policies
• Her vision for the future of psychiatry, including the integration of Neuroaesthetics and the Arts into health to enhance well-being

Whether you’re a healthcare professional, an advocate for youth, or anyone interested in the intersection of health, justice, and community, this episode offers profound insights into building a legacy of system transformation.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Dr. Wendy Slusser: What does it take to navigate complex systems, advocate for the most vulnerable, and build upon a legacy of firsts? Today we're joined by Dr. Eraka Bath, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA and a triple board certified expert in child, adolescent, adult, and forensic psychiatry.

[00:00:18] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Dr. Bath's work profoundly impacts youth in the foster care and juvenile legal systems. Join us for a powerful discussion on racial justice, structural vulnerability, and the path to system transformation. Welcome and thank you Dr. Eraka Bath for joining us on our UCLA Live Well podcast.

[00:00:41] Dr. Eraka Bath: Thank you Dr. Slusser for that kind introduction. Thank you so much. 

[00:00:46] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Thank you again. Start with telling us how you chose this extraordinary path that you have taken in psychiatry.

[00:00:55] Dr. Eraka Bath: Yeah, so I would say in college — I’ll go further back. [00:01:00] Growing up with my mother, as someone who I would say was a health justice advocate practitioner, and being in service to community and thinking about healthcare and the links between justice and equity and wellbeing, it was all part of the profession.

[00:01:22] Dr. Eraka Bath: And so I was just immersed in that from a very young age, and it was very inextricably tied to a career as a physician. This is a phenomenon that's discussed when people talk about the minority tax — where often people from underrepresented groups or first generation groups, they will, I don't wanna say be burdened, but they will participate not only in extra mentorship serving the community, but they're doing a lot of things.

[00:01:57] Dr. Eraka Bath: Because as Maya Angelou says, [00:02:00] To who is given much, much is expected, and so there's a way in which, showing up as a physician is not, you know, I don't wanna say just taking care of patients, but it's all these other things and components. My mom really embodied that in her career, and also I was exposed to that at a very intensive level in her child rearing. For example, she did something called “community ophthalmology,”which was a phrase that she coined when she was a resident and early career physician. She noticed that there was — I think like double or triple the rate but we can look this up to confirm — preventable blindness due to glaucoma and black patients versus white patients.

[00:02:47] Dr. Eraka Bath: She looked at National Eye Institute data sets to sort of come up with this finding and then wrote a letter, published a paper, and wrote a letter about part of the [00:03:00] sort of separate and unequal situation and she then really thought that eye care should be part of primary care.

[00:03:08] Dr. Eraka Bath: So a lot of — and there's a gap in that even till this day — but if it was truly embedded within our primary care enterprise, just like other integrated care models, why do we do certain screenings in different ages and stages, right? Most of the time people aren't gonna get to a Tertiary Specialty Provider.

[00:03:26] Dr. Eraka Bath: This notion of Community Ophthalmology led her to do a lot of work internationally, predominantly in Pakistan, Nigeria, and parts of China to eradicate preventable blindness due to malnutrition and due to infectious diseases.

[00:03:41] Dr. Eraka Bath: But it was all around this sort of an equity, right, kind of invoking us to think about public health strategies. So as she was a single parent — I’m an only child, so I would travel with her on some of these, missions, if you will, [00:04:00] and I remember when I was a fifth grader, I was nine and I took a month off of school to go, we called it “around the world in 30 days,” and my assignment was to write a book report on all the places I went, but she had a series of medical conferences and humanitarian work in Lagos and the surrounding areas in Karachi, Thailand.

[00:04:28] Dr. Eraka Bath: She had a conference in Athens and so we basically went through Europe, Africa, and Asia in 30 days, but I became exposed to children and communities — you know, when you're nine and you're seeing kids your age who don't have proper clothing or living in what appears to be unstable housing with limited nutritional difficulties, it leaves a mark on you.

[00:04:57] Dr. Eraka Bath: And so I had the experience of traveling [00:05:00] with her on some of these things. So I recognized this very early sort of connection between those social conditions, right, and the structural marginalization and vulnerability and health.

[00:05:13] Dr. Eraka Bath: When I was in college, I ended up traveling with her to Tunisia where she was part of something — an organization called Orbis. They basically outfitted old jets, like 747 planes with operating theaters and they would travel south to provide eye care, like ophthalmic surgeries, as well as training for local ophthalmologists in some of the more, you know, newer techniques.

[00:05:44] Dr. Eraka Bath: And so she had been key in developing the Keratoprosthesis program at UCLA, Jules Stein. That was one of the things that she was showing. In Tunisia, there's some news clips of her doing Keratoprosthesis.

[00:06:00] Dr. Eraka Bath: But what's interesting about this procedure is that it restores sight to the so-called hopelessly blind because these people have blindness due to the scar tissue, and what the procedure does is it basically inserts an interocular lens, and it almost looks like a tiny little telescope.

[00:06:18] Dr. Eraka Bath: And it allows people to see because it really pushes through the scar tissue and it becomes a lens because the people aren't blind due to some neurological pathway, right? They're blind due to scarring. People end up having 20/20 vision with this procedure. And so that was something, but going with her is a very lived experience, right?

[00:06:39] Dr. Eraka Bath: So I'm growing up over the years where this is an arc a lot of times in our careers, right? We may see patients, or we may do research — but she was doing, I would say the “OG” multihyphenate, right? So she was doing research, she was seeing patients, she had an international [00:07:00] presence doing global, ophthalmic health and had an organization, American Institute for Prevention of Blindness.

[00:07:07] Dr. Eraka Bath: So the humanitarian spirit was like very much part of that and so that's a long-winded way to say like, how did I choose my path?

[00:07:15] Dr. Eraka Bath: When you're a little kid, you say the most impressive thing. So I remember I was like, I wanna be a cardiothoracic and vascular surgeon. When I was in medical school, I did not wanna be that, but it was impressive sounding, and I think there's a lot of social capital that people experience, right, by being a doctor.

[00:07:32] Dr. Eraka Bath: People always call you by your honorific and I also saw that and experience that, and that sort of outweighed the sort of difficulty of the path, right? It's not easy to become a physician by any means, but I think I saw the sort of, buoyed by that community love that you get and positionality, right?

[00:07:55] Dr. Eraka Bath: And the ability to leverage that in many different ways and for me [00:08:00] — psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry and forensic psychiatry — I think really afforded an opportunity.

[00:08:10] Dr. Eraka Bath: But the average primary care physician doesn't have time to get into all that and so I was seeing that play out and that really made me more attracted to psychiatry.

[00:08:21] Dr. Eraka Bath: In doing that, I could actually impact their physical health because I could get at more root cause and understand behavior and context, because context always matters. The average primary care physician, and this is not to ding them — it’s the structures, right? And RVs and medical capitalism mean these are how we've had to pivot as physicians in terms of operating.

[00:08:43] Dr. Eraka Bath: So to me, I felt attracted to psychiatry because it was very holistic just in its approach and I would say that child psychiatry even offers an opportunity to intervene at different stages and levers. [00:09:00] We as child psychiatrists, we care about how a kid is doing in school.

[00:09:03] Dr. Eraka Bath: And so we will use that as an intervention lever. In addition to the family, in addition to — well, our armamentarium is larger because people allow us to be more holistic in nature and then forensics. I would say I was always really excited about the sort of interface between psychiatry and the law.

[00:09:26] Dr. Eraka Bath: I really appreciated the sort of theater of the courtroom — coming up with an opinion that is intensely substantiated by facts and data, and so that process was really fascinating to me and then of course, in my growth as a child. Forensic psychiatrists recognizing how racism plays out, particularly for youth, and the juvenile legal and child welfare system, and how those systems have [00:10:00] become de facto public mental health systems for ethno-racially minoritized youth and youth who are experiencing poverty.

[00:10:08] Dr. Eraka Bath: So I don't have really international work like my mom did, but thinking about structures and wanting to increase access to care, and thinking about equity — that’s what I would say would be the connection. 

[00:10:23] Dr. Wendy Slusser: What a journey, I have to say. I'd love to unpack all the different points that you raised, which I think are so important for all of our listeners to hear in terms of, how does somebody choose an extraordinary path like you have, and what plays into it?

[00:10:52] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Starting with the fact that your mom used observations that were a little bit outside of the surgery room, I'd love to know,

what would you be most proud of that you've done in your own career that you'd like to highlight?

[00:10:57] Dr. Eraka Bath: I did my training, residency and fellowships [00:11:00] in New York during 9/11. So I was there at St. Vincent's Hospital actually during the terror attacks and there was, a sort of public service campaign that emerged after — “if you see something, they say something,” right?

[00:11:15] Dr. Eraka Bath: And this notion of being — because I wasn't really trained as a researcher, I was trained as a clinician. I think when you do a lot of fellowships, you end up being more inclined to have an academic career. And that's been my happy place for a while but a lot of my research kind of bore out of my clinical or forensic work.

[00:11:39] Dr. Eraka Bath: So when I was a child psychiatry fellow at Bellevue Hospital and NYU, I received an American Psychiatric Association, SAMHSA Minority Fellowship Grant and what I used that grant for was completely [00:12:00] informed by my experiences with the youth at Bellevue. So Bellevue, for those who don't know, is part of New York City's larger city hospital system and it's one of the oldest psychiatric —

[00:12:13] Dr. Wendy Slusser: A legend. 

[00:12:14] Dr. Eraka Bath: It's a legend.

[00:12:14] Dr. Eraka Bath: And it's so big, right, that the hospital has a court, the hospital has a school, the hospital has a jail — it has all these things just in this one building — and as someone doing my child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship at NYU, I was exposed — and my forensic fellowship — I was exposed to those settings.

[00:12:36] Dr. Eraka Bath: And one of the things that struck me was, for youth who were in our adolescent day hospital, the levels of trauma were just staggering and their sort of educational attainment was so impacted by structural forces, right? And so their literacy was [00:13:00] just really poor. So there were kids who were in 11th grade or 10th grade and really didn't have basic reading skills, and they were just — I don't wanna say allowed, but the system moves them along and graduates people without knowing the difference between their and they’re — just how to spell and basic literacy.

[00:13:14] Dr. Eraka Bath: I felt like the — I don't wanna say the system was giving up on them, but there wasn't this sort of pouring into them and really making sure that they're reading was where it should be — which reading dictates so many of your different outcomes, right, longitudinally.

[00:13:36] Dr. Eraka Bath: So understanding that, understanding education as a pathway for my family, et cetera., I used my grant funds. I had I think $60,000 over two years. This was in like 2000 to 2005 but I used it to start a spoken word program, matching up hip hop [00:14:00] poetry spoken word for these youth who loved music and loved hip hop and didn't really see themselves as writers.

[00:14:09] Dr. Eraka Bath: But this allowed them a path, and the program ended up getting funding separately from Children of Bellevue and also from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry’s New York District Grants and so we ended up being able to keep the program going, I think for almost six or seven years after we started.

[00:14:32] Dr. Eraka Bath: Recreational arts therapists and poets right, come in and do group therapy, poetry, and writing with these youth and it really empowered them to know that they have a voice and that they could perform and be on stage and so we self-published a few anthologies and we would have a big poetry slam.

[00:14:53] Dr. Eraka Bath: Seeing the conditions, and then trying to make inroads and inroads and helping [00:15:00] people feel more empowered and bringing in the arts, and leveraging what I could as a first year child psychiatry fellow in terms of getting the SAMHSA funding to activate.

[00:15:12] Dr. Eraka Bath: And then it required a lot of administrative gerrymandering, from being able to stay after school in the hospital, getting buy-in from the arts therapy and bringing coalition building around a common cause and a need, because no one could argue that these kids didn't need extra services, and really trying to do it in a culturally attuned way that spoke to something that they cared about.

[00:15:38] Dr. Eraka Bath: I would say, also working in the juvenile courts — understanding that juvenile, like young people, being confident to stand trial was a huge issue in LA County when I joined the faculty at UCLA in 2007. So I helped the county actually devise a juvenile [00:16:00] competency to stand trial protocol that really used more evidence-based practices.

[00:16:07] Dr. Eraka Bath: But I think this notion of identifying problems in your clinical space or your working space and then coming up with more topographical solutions really encourages physicians and clinicians to think outside of the doctor patient dyad to structures, right?

[00:16:26] Dr. Eraka Bath: Yes, I can give someone psychopharmacology, but it's working on the structures, it's thinking about the policies, and so I think my path has been attuned to the meta things.

[00:16:39] Dr. Eraka Bath: And health and wellbeing is so multimodal and occurs way before they're in the doctor's office. I think pediatricians have written about this in terms of advocating for school-based services and also psychiatrists rights and school-based mental health services.

[00:16:54] Dr. Eraka Bath: Because schools are where people spend most of the time. Kids have maybe, at most, [00:17:00] five hours a year with a pediatrician, probably very even less with the child psychiatrist, but schools they have at least, I don't know — it’s like a thousand contact, something like that, but a lot.

[00:17:12] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Yes, please, yes. 

[00:17:14] Dr. Eraka Bath: Just like a little, like shameless self-disclosure. I went to Berkeley for undergrad and I was fortunate to be there like in the nineties when there were a lot of really amazing poets. So June Jordan and Cherri Moraga. So I was learning and participating in poetry for the people workshops.

[00:17:35] Dr. Eraka Bath: So I low-key identify as a poet myself. But I found it such a liberating process to participate in spoken words. So, that was part of my undergrad education and I think identity formation, and of course, back then there were not post-BAC programs. So when you wanted to go to med school, you [00:18:00] really were supposed to be a science major, which I was not.

[00:18:02] Dr. Eraka Bath: I was an Interdisciplinary Studies Social Science major, and doing poetry and dance and all this stuff, and I had to jam all my science classes in, and there wasn't as much space to have those kind of creative pursuits in med school. But I was able to come back to it, fortunately, and integrate it in a way.

[00:18:24] Dr. Wendy Slusser: That makes sense for what I've been hearing. You're whispering around now about wanting to integrate art into the wellbeing of health professionals and how important it is. So we'll have to get back to that in a minute. What I would love to hear, in addition to your inspiration of service, and also, how to practice service based on some of your mom's examples — I want to hear a little bit more about your “around the world in 30 days” and what stands out [00:19:00] in that time.

[00:19:01] Dr. Wendy Slusser: It's such a formative period for somebody growing up at that age to have that exposure. What was it that stood out to you? 

[00:19:11] Dr. Eraka Bath: It was an interesting trip because I was bored a lot of the times because I was just being dragged by my mom to these conferences, and I just had to sit and observe. But also, while she was seeing these patients, seeing these extremes, — because we weren't only working in community settings in underdeveloped countries.

[00:19:36] Dr. Eraka Bath: We stopped in Paris, we went to Rome. So I had these extremes in terms of, I don't know — staying at a nice hotel in Paris, but then having that contrast with being in a village where some of the children didn't have shoes.

[00:19:56] Dr. Eraka Bath: And just all the different things [00:20:00] that are related to those extremes of socioeconomic status from the food that's available, the type of lodging especially as a little person — you’re more primal. “Oh, am I gonna be able to have fettuccine?”

[00:20:16] Dr. Eraka Bath: Or, you’re thinking about these sort of things, but then you’re beginning to grapple with seeing kids of my own age who really just had very little, like barely any clothes on their back, and so I hadn't seen that because even though in the US there's extreme deprivation and poverty, I was buffered from that in some ways.

[00:20:45] Dr. Eraka Bath: It's still in my brain. I'm 53, so that was a long time ago, but I remember those images. It is mostly of seeing children my same age, and seeing that sort of [00:21:00] gap and just the volume of children, right?

[00:21:03] Dr. Eraka Bath: Children who were asking for money, children who were chasing after the air conditioned car, those sort of experiences. Yeah, that was — I think that was hard to see as a child, and not really being able to do a lot, or not really feeling empowered to do a lot at that time.

[00:21:25] Dr. Wendy Slusser: So it really exposed you to so many different levels of how people live. How would you say your relationship with your mom shifted or changed, or was cemented during those times of travel? 

[00:21:39] Dr. Eraka Bath: We were two peas in a pod because it was like a mother-daughter relationship, so we were always super close. And being able to travel and certainly, when I was in med school towards the end of my time there, she was doing a lot with her patents.

[00:22:00] Dr. Eraka Bath: And so she was spending time in Washington DC going to the patent office and she basically ended up getting paid a chair in Washington, DC — of course, I think to be closer to me — which now that I'm a mom of a newly 17-year-old, I —

[00:22:19] Dr. Wendy Slusser: You get it?

[00:22:20] Dr. Eraka Bath: I get it. Yeah. 

[00:22:22] Dr. Wendy Slusser: We haven't talked about that patent and how your mom trail-blazed the development of that. Would you like to share that story? 

[00:22:31] Dr. Eraka Bath: Sure. In the early mid-eighties, she was a cataract surgeon and was interested in lasers, and so ended up writing to professors in Germany and the UK to go be in their lab, and they were like, sure. Looking back, it's not dissimilar to how black intellectuals, like in the twenties and [00:23:00] thirties and fifties and sixties, went to Paris especially to be allowed to be smart and visionary and be treated as a scholarly colleague.

[00:23:04] Dr. Eraka Bath: I think one of my mom’s mentors, her name is Dr. Danielle Aaron Rosa, was a French Ophthalmologist who was like one of the original Ophthalmology Laser Scientists. She loved Danielle who was petite, and then Chanel, also a laser geek like my mom, and was encouraging and let her stay at her apartment and really develop friendships internationally again.

[00:23:43] Dr. Eraka Bath: To really have access to learning and being in a community of practice and so, I think it's really interesting that she made the discovery while she was in Berlin. They didn't really wanna help her out here, and [00:24:00] that's not uncommon for women. Like sometimes you can't be a prophet in your own land, right?

[00:24:05] Dr. Eraka Bath: And having to go, and all the different intersectional barriers, and so she went to Europe and that's where she discovered the frequency of laser to ablate the bovine lens, but that's where she figured out the secret sauce which ended up being the patent for Laser Phaco. 

[00:24:27] Dr. Eraka Bath: Because people had tried before, and they would either destroy it because it was too hot — it was like Goldilocks a little bit — she figured out the right frequency and her work built on Charlie Kelman, who is a world famous Ophthalmologist who's also in the Inventor's Hall of Fame.

[00:24:46] Dr. Eraka Bath: Because when you're getting rid of cataracts, you're using Phaco Emulsification. So it's ultrasound and irrigation, so it's the sonic vibrations that are breaking up the cataract as material, and then the suction [00:25:00] and irrigation. So she basically applied to that Phaco Emulsification, which is why she calls it Laser Phaco.

[00:25:09] Dr. Eraka Bath: And it made the procedure sutureless. Shorter recovery times.

[00:25:14] Dr. Wendy Slusser: And it's still being used.

[00:25:17] Dr. Eraka Bath: Oh, yeah. 

[00:25:18] Dr. Wendy Slusser: A gift to all the aging people. Yeah.

[00:25:21] Dr. Eraka Bath: When I last looked this up, I think it's the most common ophthalmic surgery there is, right?

[00:25:29] Dr. Eraka Bath: Nationally? I think there's like over 65 million cataracts surgeries a year or something. Like something or six — that might be wrong, but it is the most common ophthalmic surgery. And it's, yeah, it's highly used. Now, not everyone is using laser cataract surgery. Certainly, like in super developed countries, you have — if you have PPO insurance, you're probably going to choose laser over non laser if you have the choice.

[00:25:57] Dr. Eraka Bath: And then there's certain types [00:26:00] of cataracts, I think depending on the age or size or the thickness, that the laser is better to use.

[00:26:09] Dr. Eraka Bath: My mom would say eyesight is the basic human right. Give the gift of sight. So she really felt like eye care needed to be part of primary care. There's letters in her archive to Richard Nixon, to Governor Brown, and exchanges to Mayor Tom Bradley around, kids need glasses or this is preventable blindness.

[00:26:30] Dr. Eraka Bath: Or to Jocelyn Elder, like different dignitaries within leadership positions. She was — I know she assisted the Carter administration, consulted with the Obama administration, but at different points in her career, thinking about policy, right? And this connection between health and policy and being on the ground and wanting to get dollars to flow or research to flow to address some of [00:27:00] these sort of preventable things.

[00:27:01] Dr. Eraka Bath: Both thinking about community psychiatry and public health, right? And making sure that we use public health approaches to eye care, which we don't really necessarily. So that was very much a part of developing five patents nationally and three internationally.

[00:27:19] Dr. Eraka Bath: And I think one of the things that I didn't really realize until later on. In 2019, she got asked to testify in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. It was the same day I think that they were voting on Trump's impeachment. And I remember I met Senator Hirono and Senator Coons because my mother and my daughter and I, we all went to Washington for this.

[00:27:49] Dr. Eraka Bath: And the hearing was titled “Lost Einsteins,” and it was to call attention to women inventors and these [00:28:00] gaps in innovation that we experience because we don't have a level playing field for women and inventors, or for people of color and inventors, and that because of that, we're losing billions of dollars of GDP.

[00:28:15] Dr. Eraka Bath: Because we are not leveraging half of the population.

[00:28:19] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Wow. 

[00:28:20] Dr. Eraka Bath: Or more. Because if you think about the intersectional aspects — and we can look this up, but I believe that only 12% of patents actually are by women and those are mostly women on teams. If you look at single filing patents by women, it's single digits.

[00:28:39] Dr. Wendy Slusser: And your mom is one of them.

[00:28:41] Dr. Eraka Bath: Yeah, so she was doing this in 1986 and 87, and how hard it would be, and of course no one believed her that she could do it and so I think that was a really powerful moment. They chose someone from industry, an academic, but there were like four panelists, and this is [00:29:00] available online — but her testimony, she talked about this phenomenon called the Matilda Effect, which is where men get credit for women's scientific innovation.

[00:29:11] Dr. Eraka Bath: So we saw this with Rosalind Franklin and Watson And Crick, and the Double Helix, and even Maria Curie — she did end up getting Nobel Prize, et cetera., but it was after the fact, right? Now we know Maria Curie a hundred plus years later, but in the moment, a lot of her achievement was obfuscated by Nettie Stevens, who figured out the chromosomes. And my mom actually felt like a lot of her challenges were related to gender. Do you know what I mean? We see this even in our presidential candidates, from Hillary to Kamala, to Nikki Haley — a lot of the gender bias is so intensive that it is the bigger glass ceiling in some ways.

[00:29:55] Dr. Eraka Bath: And so she spoke about the Matilda Effect, but the reason why they had this [00:30:00] hearing was to highlight this sort of gap in innovation, and we see it even in academic medicine, Dr. Slusser. But we're such a minority as full professors in academic medicine. I think it's only what, 35% are women full professors.

[00:30:16] Dr. Eraka Bath: Even though women and men have been graduating medical school at the same rates since the eighties, the sort of gap in terms of representation at higher levels and at leadership. And my mom was really interested in this phenomenon and also, even if you invent something and get the patent — all of which is very hard to do, you really need venture capital.

[00:30:40] Dr. Eraka Bath: And so there's also a gap in terms of who's going to invest in women, so if you can't get the investment, you're not gonna bring your patent to market.

[00:30:50] Dr. Wendy Slusser: That's right. So how'd your mom do that? How did she get it?

[00:30:53] Dr. Eraka Bath: She did not bring her patent to market. So, even though she had the patent, she did [00:31:00] not reap the sort of financial benefits from having the patent and that's not sadly uncommon for women inventors or BIPOC inventors, that there's this sort of lack of investment.

[00:31:14] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Oh wow. I didn't know that last step was still there. That's incredible. The work that your mom did, she created this community ophthalmology track. She clearly was a mentor to you and probably to many others, and how have you translated that experience in your own practice as a mentor?

[00:31:38] Dr. Eraka Bath: Yeah, I really think about this concept of servant leadership and trying to do too much. She was given much as expected, so trying to live as I climb — I don't know, just recognizing that I was born with a lot of privilege. It's a privilege to be a doctor. It's a privilege to be a professor.

[00:31:57] Dr. Eraka Bath: It's a privilege to be a homeowner. So whatever I [00:32:00] can share or give, I don't know, be as generous as possible with my time, if I can open my home and host things for some of our residents who are interested in equity or community building.

[00:32:14] Dr. Wendy Slusser: So along those lines, in terms of your own work, what would you like to see for the future in terms of breakthroughs or research in your field of psychiatry and Child Adolescent and Forensic Psychiatry? 

[00:32:31] Dr. Eraka Bath: I'm probably guilty of having too many interests and passion projects, and I'm really fascinated by the field of Neuroaesthetics, and maybe if I had a real doppelganger, I would go back and get a PhD in neuroscience and just study your brain on art.

[00:32:49] Dr. Eraka Bath: I wanna try to collaborate with folks and try to think about how to leverage the arts more intentionally. A lot of, there's, [00:33:00] I don't know — at least a dozen academic medical centers around the country who have pretty strong arts and health programs, and we have inklings of that.

[00:33:10] Dr. Eraka Bath: We have arts and humanities that the medical students benefit from, but not the range and scope and scale I think our university deserves, especially being in Los Angeles, having two museums on site and Hammer, and then also all those sort of larger networks.

[00:33:28] Dr. Eraka Bath: And so thinking about the arts and really helping add to the scientific base of how it's not only helpful for people, but learning to play guitar can help with their dementia or help with their physical therapy recovery or just like how you had shared with me the piano project.

[00:33:48] Dr. Eraka Bath: Or thinking about people with lived experience with Cystic Fibrosis who might be artists but using art to explain some of those symptoms so that learners [00:34:00] and providers can have a better, more multidimensional understanding of the impact of the illness or bringing healthcare workers to gallery and museum spaces and do team building helps their own sort of cortisol and dopamine be impacted in ways that reduce burnout.

[00:34:17] Dr. Eraka Bath: So really thinking about ways to bridge, and I think that was what was so inspiring about Chancellor Frank's speech, because he is the son of an artist and a physician, and he called that forward, right? In talking about those two things are not as far apart at all. A lot of physicians actually are quite artistic.

[00:34:38] Dr. Eraka Bath: Play music, write poems, draw, dance, and so centering that, and the connectivity that's always there, but just being de-siloed in our disciplines, and having more sort of cross-disciplinary connection, but particularly around the arts I think, and health, and using some of our existing [00:35:00] assets on campus to do that.

[00:35:02] Dr. Eraka Bath: And then I'm also interested in thinking about — as someone who's worked with youth during the juvenile legal system, child welfare system, and really girls in particular — their reproductive health and needs. The things that people don't realize is, in this climate, where there's threats to bodily autonomy and choice, this is going to impact girls actually, and girls who are black and brown the most, who are in these systems.

[00:35:31] Dr. Eraka Bath: So it's not just about, oh, “are you for abortion or not?” It's really impacted the range of reproductive and sexual health. So really being able to access contraception, all these things. So nationally, there's now what are described as contraception deserts, right? That parallel states’ policies around allowing abortion or not.

[00:35:55] Dr. Eraka Bath: And so thinking about, I would say that's an area of [00:36:00] scholarship that I’ve invested time in and co-developed, and intervention, but I want to see that growing in different ways just to help youth navigate and have access more broadly. 

[00:36:12] Dr. Wendy Slusser: You give me so much hope for the future to have someone like you, being a steward for people who you're observing are gonna be at risk and at higher risk, and it’s nice to hear you have a curriculum available that would help people support these vulnerable youth in particular. So I know we're getting close to the end, and we always like to ask our guests, what does it mean for you to live well?

[00:36:45] Dr. Eraka Bath: Oh, wow. I think it's such a — that is the meta question of the time now. Last week was so hard with everything going on. I feel like LA, we’ve just been getting beat up, but not beat down. And I have [00:37:00] definitely been trying to be in joy mode. So rest and renewal, cooking for friends, gathering, being in community. I’m finding so much — it's like to be with loved ones and meeting new friends of connection.

[00:37:20] Dr. Eraka Bath: This is part of, I think the Neuroaesthetics science, right? And how can we sort of hack our brains and do more of the feel good stuff? So dancing, the enhanced interpersonal synchrony, right? When people are singing in choirs, it does something to their brain, to their body.

[00:37:36] Dr. Eraka Bath: And so I think that's part of the community effect. If we think about Malcolm Gladwell's work and people who live long, it’s really those community social ties. So trying to like embody that myself. Also hope that we can get our health system, and I think that that's been really important about the work that you've been leading.

[00:37:58] Dr. Eraka Bath: Dr. Slusser, the Healthy Campus [00:38:00] Initiative is thinking about collective approaches, right? Social prescribing, doing sort of acupuncture on our sort of environmental setting to bring people together. And, yeah, I think that's really how I've been, that's what wellness is for me — is like feeling like this sense of belonging and being in community.

[00:38:24] Dr. Eraka Bath: It's when I feel the happiest, the most like levity.

[00:38:29] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Wow. I wish I had met your mom. Thank you for sharing with me and our listeners. Your mother's life-saving contributions to medicine and society, and how it inspired you on your path as a psychiatrist. Trail-blazing innovative programs and services to promote the wellbeing of our most vulnerable youth.

[00:38:46] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Any last words before we close? 

[00:38:50] Dr. Eraka Bath: I was thinking about how Freud talks about live, work, play, right? This sort of — it doesn't have to be a balance, but you need to pour into all [00:39:00] three, right? There's a whole sort of sides of play, because as adults, we forget how to do that.

[00:39:06] Dr. Wendy Slusser: I love the idea of that integration, and what you said about the acupuncture, there's that expression of urban acupuncture. Same idea. Yeah. So thank you again and I like ending it on that note. Let's bring more joy to our world. I love that.

[00:39:25] Dr. Eraka Bath: Thank you so much.

[00:39:42] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Thank you for joining us for this powerful conversation with Dr. Erica Bath. Her reflections on justice, healing, and the role of creativity in medicine, remind us that wellness is deeply rooted in community, compassion, and curiosity. We are also so grateful for the story she shared about her mom, Dr. Patricia [00:40:00] Bath — a visionary, physician, inventor, and global health advocate whose legacy continues to inspire new generations of change makers from poetry to policy. Dr. Erica Bath's work carries that legacy forward in bold and meaningful ways.

[00:40:18] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Until next time, take care. Stay connected, and live well.